


Allergies

by cthulhu_has_chaotic_stories (cthulhu_is_chaotic_good)



Category: Alex Rider - Anthony Horowitz
Genre: AR Febuwhump, Allergies, FebuWhump2021, Gen, Insomnia, Mad Science, This Isn't How Science Works?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-18 00:08:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29234301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cthulhu_is_chaotic_good/pseuds/cthulhu_has_chaotic_stories
Summary: For Febuwhump, a two-shot for the alternative prompt of ‘allergies’.
Comments: 26
Kudos: 60
Collections: AR Febuwhump 2021





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For Febuwhump, a two-shot for the alternative prompt of ‘allergies’.

Benjamin Park, Alex’s name tag read. He was the new intern reporting for his first day to Savoy Labs, although the company may well have been called Mad Science Inc. if the crimes against medical science that had been suspected by MI6 turned out to be true. 

He would be working under Dr. Varadkar, a British scientist with dual citizenship to India. That the man could claim another nationality was the sole reason MI6 had been contacted, Mrs. Jones claimed. Alex rather suspected that the lack of other qualified university students who would make time to work for the British Government at such short notice may have been an additional factor. 

His morning consisted of filling out his intake paperwork and meeting the lab rats undergoing a current experimental medical treatment. The rats’ cages were labelled Witches and Muggles to separate the rats in the experiment from the control population. Alex hadn’t been sure whether to empathize more with the witches or the muggles - he supposed it depended on the results of the experiment.

Despite knowing of the suspected human experimentation the good doctor had been accused of, Alex was starting to like Dr. Varadkar. He smiled cheerily during the morning’s orientation, asking kindly questions about his intern’s university experience to date, and he even bought coffee for Alex when they stopped in the cafeteria for a quick break at midday.

Alex’s cover had been going swimmingly until Yassen Gregorovich walked into Dr. Varadkar’s crowded office space at a quarter to two.

Claiming that his stomach dropped and his blood turned to ice in his veins could be called, in the most charitable description, a vastly under-exaggerated lie. 

He _froze._ Instantly, four years of experience fled, and he was fourteen again, young and scared and unprepared for the world he had been thrust into after Ian’s death. 

“And who is he pretending to be?” Yassen asked, quietly.

Dr. Varadkar stared at Alex, a sudden glint of hard interest in his eye. “My intern? His name is Benjamin Park.” 

“His name is Alex Rider,” Yassen corrected. “He works for MI6.”

Alex recovered himself enough to offer a feeble protest, grabbing his jacket from the back of his chair as he stood to leave. “You’ve got the wrong person. I don’t know who that is, but I’ll leave so you two can talk.”

“Sit down, Alex.” There was nothing sharp about the man’s tone. His stance, calm and collected, stayed the same.

The danger remained.

Alex sat back down, pulse racing as he did.

Yassen closed the door to the office behind him. He walked, measured, until he was standing behind Alex’s chair. He placed his hands on each of Alex’s shoulders. 

Preventing himself from hyperventilating took as much control as Alex had.

Standing over him, the danger that he couldn’t see and couldn’t control asked, “How did you find him?” 

“He applied online, the same as every other applicant,” the doctor replied. “A professor at his university recommended him. By far, his resumé stood out the most.”

“And how much of that resumé did MI6 craft?”

Alex didn’t - couldn’t - answer immediately. Yassen waited a moment, and then slid one of his hands across the top of Alex’s shoulder, stopping next to his neck.

“A lot,” Alex managed.

“When will your handler expect a call?”

“Soon.”

“Soon meaning?”

Dr. Varadkar cut in then. “He was expected to stay until nine tonight. He doesn’t have a phone with him. They aren’t allowed in the labs.”

Yassen sighed. “That’s enough time. Who all has seen him?”

“Some colleagues. Others at lunch.”

“Call the front desk. Ask them if they saw him leave after you ate. If anyone asks, you will say he left after lunch. He didn’t say where he was going, and you were so engrossed in work that you didn’t ask.”

“What about him?”

Alex felt the weight of the doctor’s clinical examination. Any remote signs of kindness had fled. Now Alex was another witch or muggle: a lab experiment gone wrong, ready to be wiped off the table and into the bin.

“It would be better if he was unconscious,” Yassen suggested. He was not a man whose suggestions could be ignored. The doctor nodded, standing up as well.

“No,” Alex said, desperately. He tried to surge forward out of the chair, hoping his momentum would let him slip out of Yassen’s grasp. 

Yassen’s fingers dug into his neck and shoulder blade, holding him in place. 

“I don’t know anything!”

“We will decide what you know.”

Captive, unable to move, Alex watched as the doctor reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a small white box. “This won’t help you,” he pleaded, watching as a syringe was filled with a clear liquid. “If you kill me they’ll find out; they’ll stop your research; you’ll go to jail!”

The needle stung as it entered his arm through his shirt. Alex didn’t flinch, but he knew Yassen, still standing behind him with a strong grip on his shoulders, felt every tremble of fear and pain that shook his body. 

Increasingly desperate, Alex tried his last attempt, as the tug of unconsciousness pulled at him. “They’ll pay you to release me. I’m worth money alive. Please!”

If either man responded, he wasn’t aware.

\-------------

White ceiling. Cold. Metal pressed against his chest. Heartbeat. Voices, familiar voices. Memories. The past; times he’d tried to forget. Shards and fragments of speech echoed in his head; a conversation half heard.

“- have a trial sample of a serum that would make him speak the truth. We’ll know everything.”

“ -not necessary. I know him. He will speak the truth or - “

“- a good subject for -”

“ - won’t cooperate, he’ll fight it. And if you wanted to -”

And then, echoing back at him, his own words: “ - don’t know me. You never knew me and I don’t care that -” - and another needle, injected into the same spot in his arm, sending him back under.

\-------------

Hurt, aching muscles, unable to move.

Wait.

He couldn’t move?

Slowly, he came back to himself, closing his eyes to the endless white and blinding, harsh fluorescent lights above him so he could concentrate on moving.

He wiggled his toes. Felt them move.

Tried to sit up.

Couldn’t.

Restraints, hard and steel - why hadn’t he felt them before? Where was his shirt? He could at least claim to feel his trousers on still, but why had they needed to remove his shirt? 

Faintly he recalled an object pressed against his chest, over his heart. And as he remembered that, conversation resumed in his ear, far away and difficult to catch.

“ - don’t have the faculties for a human test subject at the time, much as I want -”

“ - that they’re investigating. Keep the place clean and let them sweep the building -”

“ - seems young and fit. He would be the perfect subject for -- and I can get my data from -”

“ - you do that, he won’t be trouble -”

“ - and I agree that he’ll cooperate if he wants to -”

“ - wake him up.”

The final phrase sounded in his ear as he felt the finger tilt his chin up, forcing his head back against the table that held him. Instinctively his eyes jolted open, and he stared into the empty blue gaze of his enemy.

“He’s awake,” Yassen observed, idly, letting go of his chin.

“How much has he heard?”

“Enough,” Alex responded. Which wasn’t true - he didn’t understand any of what he’d heard, other than the vague notion that he wouldn’t like whatever came next - but it seemed the sort of bravado that one should adopt in these sorts of situations.

“What does MI6 know?” Yassen asked. 

Alex clamped his mouth shut and glared. If they wanted to kill him - presumably after turning him into a lab rat himself - then they could do it without his cooperation.

Cooperation. 

The word resounded in his ear, familiar and unfamiliar at once; spoken in Yassen’s impersonal and detached voice, far away and close up.

“They know everything,” Alex said, recovering his bravery. “You can kill me but they’ll send someone else. Everyone else. Whatever you’re doing, it won’t work!”

“One would think you would know _what_ the doctor is working on, if MI6 knows everything.”

Alex didn’t give a flying fuck what _one_ would think, least of all if that one was Yassen. He let his expression convey that message.

Yassen frowned. He moved away from the table. Alex turned his head, in so much as being tethered to a table allowed, following Yassen’s travel around the lab with his eyes.

Watching him in return, Yassen circled the table until he reached the other side of Alex. Once there, he placed a thumb over Alex’s heart. Over the scar where the bullet had entered him.

Heart rate speeding up, Alex tried to squirm away, moving as much as the restraints allowed. 

Yassen pushed down, hard.

Alex gasped, his vision of the sterile lab blackening to a dark splotch in the middle of gaze. “Stop!”

To his surprise, Yassen did. He took a step away from Alex, making himself easier to examine. “What does MI6 know? Why did they send you?”

Trying a different tact, Alex blurted, “I don’t know. They didn’t tell me what they knew. I know it’s a lot.”

“Be specific.”

He stayed stubbornly silent at that. Giving up specifics would surely entail revealing how little MI6 knew; how they had only been pulled onto this case because MI5 suspected Dr. Varadkar would flee outside of their jurisdiction should he become wary of being investigated. 

“Alex.” The ton was a warning, no doubt of things to come should he prove resistant.

He intended to prove resistant. The longer he was alive, even in pain, the more likely that his absence would be noticed. Not that it would be noticed soon - not until tomorrow at the earliest.

“Let me.”

Dr. Varadkar.

Alex swung his head around, looking for the man. He couldn’t find him, but the large lab contained corners outside of his field of vision.

The doctor stepped forward so that Alex could see him. He was holding a syringe. “I was upset to learn that you were lying to me, Benjamin. Or, I suppose I should call you by your real name. Alex. Now it is time for answers, and quickly. We’re in a lab with all sorts of chemicals. Have you ever been injected with a serum that will cause your flesh to rot from the inside out? Or been forced to swallow a pill that could force a heart attack within thirty minutes? I don’t think you have. And you wouldn’t find it pleasant, I can assure you of that.”

The doctor uncapped the syringe. “Do you know what this does? I can tell you. You won’t like it, and more than that, there is no antidote. Once I inject it into your arm, the effects will begin, and it will be too late for me to save you.”

Alex looked away.

“Tell him what it does.”

“This concoction stops your lungs. Slowly, painfully, you will choke on air, over the course of several hours. Is that how you want to die?”

The temperature of the lab dropped. 

“Tell me what they know, and your death will come some other way,” the doctor promised. “What do they know?”

Yassen, on the other side of the table, reached out and brushed a hand through Alex’s hair. The gesture could have meant a million things - to Alex right then, right at that moment, it meant only that Alex was defenseless. He heard his heart thud in his ear as Yassen warned, “You have a minute.”

Alex had counted to twenty-seven seconds, each second with the effect of a gong going off in his head, when the doctor pressed the needle of the syringe against his arm.

He couldn’t die like the man had described.

“Experiments,” Alex gasped. “They know you were using humans for experiments. People have gone missing. Lots of people. MI5 noticed a pattern! and MI6 got involved” He gulped. On either side of him, a man stared down. On one side, the doctor, holding a despicable weapon, armed and loaded. On the other side, the first man he’d wanted to kill. When neither of the men stopped him, Alex continued, his voice shaking. “Then they found people, but they were different.” 

People with no memories - people who acted strange. The scientists had said that cognitive behavioral science had overwritten the individuals' recent recollections. Combined with the rest of the symptoms they exhibited - what they said - and the dots had been clear: human experimentation. Alex didn’t know how Dr. Varadkar had been found out, but obviously MI6 had been correct in their suspicions, because innocent scientists didn’t tie teenagers to examination tables and threaten to kill them.

“Different,” Dr. Varadkar mused, his voice sickeningly satisfied. “What an imprecise word. When you come back to tell me about how you’re doing, I’ll expect measurements. Data. Specifics.”

He pressed the syringe down, and fire flooded out from the injection site.

A part of Alex broke. _He’d told the truth._ In shock and in pain, his hands forming fists, he gasped up at the white expanse above him, “I didn’t do anything!”

The doctor walked away, throwing the syringe into a waste basket as he did. He picked up a clipboard and scrawled into it. “Do take a breath. I lied. You aren’t going to die. At least, not yet.”

The flames licking through his arm argued that the doctor was a bastard, no matter what the syringe held.

Alex couldn’t find words to speak through his horrified and seizing breaths.

“I am working on weaponizing bodies, but not through the lungs. Not alone, anyway.”

“To the point,” Dr. Varadkar continued, “You are going to undergo a change. People develop allergies at all ages. You will develop one soon, within a few hours, I’d wager. The compound I injected acts quite quickly." The man waited until Alex’s breathing slowed and held control over himself again. “What do you think you are going to be allergic to, if you had to guess?”

“I don’t know. Mad scientists.”

Dr. Varadkar smiled. And then he told Alex.

It wasn’t possible.

Alex looked to Yassen, seeking sanity even if it came from a contract killer. Yassen looked back, bored.

“That’s not real,” Alex said, disbelieving.

“It is. And people will pay a lot of money for the ability to manifest this allergy in people, for many reasons.”

Staring, Alex felt the first real concern stab him. The found people who had gone missing and reappeared without memories, acting _wrong_ \- could this explain them? 

“I’m in development of a cure, have no fear. And you are going to do something for me, to earn that cure.”

“No, I won’t.”

“You will. I want the data on my patients. The ones who don’t remember me, that I have released back into London. All of the files. The specifics. I want them. I have been monitoring the patients from afar, but it isn’t practical to keep so many in lab conditions, not when I know that agencies are breathing down my back. And now they’ve sent me you! You will get that data for me, and I can finally know how the subjects are acclimating to their new way of life.”

“I wouldn’t even have a way to get that!”

“Find a way. You will find one, for a trial dose of solution that will reverse your allergy. If you don’t work with me, though - if you go back to MI6, and try to put me in jail, or if you try to feed me false data, know that it won’t work, and that there will be no saving you. So before you run back to them, test the allergy. See if you would still call me mad at the end.”

Alex launched into a tirade of obscenities, throwing every foul word he knew, real and imaginary, into the assault. 

Over his profanities, he heard, “I can leave him in your hands?”.

“I’ll see him out,” Yassen agreed

The doctor left.

“He’s insane,” Alex said. “ _You’re_ insane. This isn’t real.”

Yassen pressed a button at the end of the table. The shackles released, and Alex could sit up again. He clamored to his feet, putting distance between them. Yassen made no move to follow him. 

“Do you understand, Alex?” the man asked. “Go to MI6 and tell them what happened, and they will only laugh at you. They will think it's in your brain. If they believe you, they will come after the doctor, and he will leave the country. You will be stuck with the condition.”

“Why are you doing this?”

Yassen shrugged. “Why does anyone do anything?”

“To stop people like you.”

“Perhaps.” His gaze sharpened. “Now, though, you will tell MI6 that you left here after lunch. You are done working on this mission. You will return here in a week, and ask to see the doctor again, with the files he requested. If you do, perhaps your allergy will be fixed.”

Alex found his shirt next to his wallet on a cleaned countertop, and put it on, defensively. “I’m going home.”

“Do that. I’ll walk you out.”

“I’ll tell MI6 that you’re here.”

“Do that as well, if you want. Remember that it means you will have forfeited a cure.” Yassen tilted his head. “I would wait a day.”

\-------------

Alex stumbled out into the cold chill of the London air. He didn’t have his jacket, and his phone hadn’t been returned to him from the front desk. Alex hadn’t stayed around to collect it - the phone was a gadget of MI6’s making, anyway, and not his own personal possession. 

He needed to get home. To decide how to handle this, and see if Dr. Varadkar had spoken the truth of what the syringe contained. MI6 could wait. 

Everything could wait.

He needed to sleep, and to see if it was true.


	2. Chapter 2

What made someone a mad scientist? Were they mad if they were insane, seeking a twisted form of science that couldn’t conceivably become true? Or were they mad if they simply eschewed ethics in favor of ambitious experiments that disregarded ethics?

In this case, Alex was convinced that Dr. Varadkar fit into both categories neatly.

An allergy to sleep _fit_ the people who had reappeared without memories, in a strange way. If they couldn’t sleep – or technically, could sleep, but it would prove fatal the longer they remained in the state – then no wonder they were dazed, confused, inhuman, and couldn’t hold a conversation. The file said that many of the people who had reappeared were abusing substances – caffeine, for a few, but speed and worse for others – but the file hadn’t claimed to understand why the subjects were so averse to sleep. Hadn’t claimed to understand why three of the people discovered had died without any proven cause. Hadn’t claimed to understand the dependencies the subjects of MI6’s investigation had turned to.

Maybe those people hadn’t understood themselves if their memories had been wiped. Perhaps they only understood that deep sleep brought death.

Alex needed to sleep. He needed to see if there was any truth to this supposed ‘allergy’.

Why would Yassen let him go if the man didn’t think the doctor was right?

Why did Yassen let him go at all, at least with his memories intact?

Alex headed home. He would tell MI6 about the past few hours soon, with all the details that entailed. With the fact that Yassen was here.

First, thought, sleep. Even a nap.

\-------------

Alex had, once upon a time, before MI6 stole most of his friends from him, known a friend with a deep allergy to peanuts. That friend had described the symptoms to a group of kids at school once, when asked: throat constricting, tongue swelling, rashes, hives. Gasping for breath through a throat that wasn’t working properly. _And those were just the symptoms that one person experienced._

When he dragged himself to consciousness fifteen minutes after falling asleep – it had taken hours to force himself to nap, with the paranoia playing at the back of his mind, but finally he had drifted off after opening a video of ocean waves on his computer and setting it by his bed – he woke in a panic, struggling for breath, feeling the urge to scratch at the itches on his arms, but most of all desperate to _breathe._

It took most of an hour before he could inhale properly again without gasping to force the air in and out.

_Dr. Varadkar was fucking mad._

No. Calm. Stop panicking.

One experiment with sleep – one dip into the dreams – while half convinced that he would wake up gasping for air _couldn’t_ be enough proof as to the reality of the situation.

He needed to try again. To try again with a conviction that he wouldn’t wake up with symptoms _–_ after all, this could be merely a placebo effect. His brain playing tricks on him.

Yassen’s mind games working on him.

Alex closed his eyes and breathed deeply into his sheets. It would be alright. Sleep would come, and with it, dreams of what he would do tomorrow: go to MI6, tell them about the mad scientist and his assassin, and see a doctor about this placebo effect of believing himself allergic to sleep.

In the background, his computer continued to play peaceful sounds of waves gently sliding onto a sandy beach.

One sheep. Two sheep. Three sheep.

_Sleep._

\-------------

Dr. Varadkar could be called a mad scientist, but he wasn’t crazy.

The allergy was real.

Alex couldn’t sleep.

Technically, it was possible. It was possible in the sense that walking into a crowed highway was possible.

Advisable, though?

No. Sleep could not be called advisable.

Not if Alex wanted to live.

\-------------

He tested the limits of the allergy, hoping desperately all the while that the next time he slept he would wake without any symptoms. The prognosis did not give hope.

Within ten minutes of sleep, his throat constricted. An itch, usually concentrated on his arms, began to bother. A rash on his neck appeared.

The most sleep Alex got before waking up – desperate for medication to help him breathe – counted forty seven minutes.

He thought he would die.

Epi-pens might help - if he could go to a doctor. If they would understand what had happened to him – whatever substance had been injected into his veins. If MI6 didn’t monitor his records.

If he hadn’t decided that he might need to steal a file from MI6.

\-------------

Day three without sleep. Drifting, drifting, drifting in his head, unfocused and ignoring calls and concentrating on awake, being awake, staying awake a few more minutes at a time.

He wouldn’t give in to blackmail.

_Fatigue._

Restlessness, intermixed with pacing, unfocused, only one thing on his mind: _don’t sleep._

Yassen had explained his short term goal: get certain medical files. He’d made Alex understand that if he wanted to survive for long, he would need to bring MI6’s records of the case to him.

Fuck that.

_He wouldn’t give in._

Except part of Alex already wanted to, just so he could be done with this.

Crying felt the natural thing to do. He wasn’t sad, he was just _tired,_ so tired, like he wasn’t a person anymore but a zombie stumbling through existence. Except this zombie wasn’t a danger to anyone but himself.

He needed to sleep.

He couldn’t sleep.

_This couldn’t be real._

\-------------

The days that followed made less sense. Alex stumbled through classes for a day, pinching himself to stay awake, and downing Monsters and extra caffeinated cold brews between his lectures. After that, he gave up. He didn’t have the energy to drag himself somewhere besides the corner shop for more energy drinks.

MI6 called. _Of course_ they called. They weren’t concerned about him – Alex hadn’t given them any reason to know that he’d been injured (if this condition could even be suitably called an injury). Instead, Mrs. Jones snapped at him angrily, wondering just when he’d decided to abandon his job.

Alex hung up mid-condemnation. It took enough of his brainpower to keep himself awake without the reminder that he was failing others as well as himself.

The hallucinations started on the fifth day.

Ian was the worst. Alex hadn’t expected it – he mostly functioned these days trying not to think of Ian’s impact on his life – but perhaps because the last time he’d been this tired was either mid-mission or when he was an exhausted child, Ian’s voice rang clear and strong in his head.

_You need to sleep, Alex._

“I know,” Alex mumbled, lacking the strength to sound affronted that Ian thought him an idiot child.

_You aren’t helping anyone like this. Sleep. I’ll be here._

“You’re dead.” Alex would be dead if he slept longer than the ten minute catnaps and dozing off that he currently relied on.

_Tell Jones. Get her help._

Laughing hysterically, Alex had never felt so terrible.

_You don’t have to be alone. Tell me what’s happening._

It sounded so similar to his first day of primary, when he’d come home upset at not yet having friends in class. Except who could Alex tell about this who would believe him? And if MI6 believed him, would Alex ever be cured?

His head hurt so much it ached.

Alex hadn’t even stopped laughing when he started to cry.

\-------------

He lost count of the times he woke up almost dead – dead tired, dead to earth, almost out of oxygen and clinging to life with the barest of threads.

The irony of suffocating was that the condition made a person panic when they needed to be calm. Each time, Alex desperately sought to take bigger gulps of air than he could manage and managed to take in less than he was capable of, knowing all the while that if he could only _calm,_ he would be much better off. But he couldn’t calm himself, because he was dying, and he’d learned from experience that dying wasn’t a calm state of affairs.

If dying was calm, Alex might have given in to the urge by day six.

_I raised you to survive,_ Ian said.

Alex would gladly punch Ian if his damned voice would just take a form.

\-------------

In the end, he stole the file on the case.

It shouldn’t have been so easy, but people knew Alex by face. He was the youngest spy MI6 had still, he was reasonably certain. Still. Someone should have stopped him when he left through the front door with a briefcase after leaving straight from the file room – he was too exhausted to come up with a distraction – and yet they didn’t.

Alex would have hoped that the blackmail would work if he’d only had awareness. Instead, he was a drone, taking one step after the other only because Ian was behind him, lambasting his decision to betray MI6, and Alex needed to get away.

When he settled down for a night of ten minute timers and a handful of caffeine pills to take in the morning, only one thought stuck in his head through the pain of sleep’s pull: _please._ _Let me sleep._

\-------------

Savoy Labs loomed as ominously over the skyline as it had the first time Alex had entered, as intern Benjamin Park

The security guards at the door took one look at Alex and pulled him to the side. Alex couldn’t blame them. He’d seen himself in the mirror that morning. He’d seen the bags under his eyes, and how he trembled like a drug addict. Alex would have pulled himself to the side too if he’d been in their position.

“I’m here to see Dr. Varadkar,” Alex mumbled to the first guard. He crossed his arms and suppressed a shiver as he waited for the guards to wave him through.

He’d felt less terrible after breaking bones. If he’d been run over by a train, he thought he might have felt better.

Maybe he should have tried hard drugs over the past week. Could it have possibly been worse?

The guards made a short call. Then the call was hung up. They didn’t wave him through. Instead, they told him to wait. Someone would walk down to get him.

Yassen’s blue eyes cut through him, doubtless missing no details. Alex wondered if Yassen had expected to see him a wreck. He wondered if Yassen had thought him tougher than this, or if he’d thought Alex still a child.

“I have it,” Alex whispered, after Yassen had examined him by the front door a moment, without a word.

_Please. Please, let him sleep._

“Alright,” Yassen assented. “Follow me.”

The doctor’s lab remained as sterile as it had been before. The doctor was waiting, ready.

Yassen took the briefcase Alex had been holding, and opened it. He looked through the file inside.

“It’s here.”

“Let me see,” Dr. Varadkar said greedily. He took the file, flipping through the pages.

Alex couldn’t help himself. His eyes closed, and he started to drift.

_Murderer,_ Ian whispered behind him. _Alex, you’re working with my murderer._

Yassen’s hand on his forearm shook him as awake as he could be, for someone who hadn’t truly slept in a week.

“These are real results,” the doctor announced.

“What do they say?” Yassen asked. “Did the allergy work? How long does it stay with people?”

“Without a cure?” Dr. Varadkar chucked. His tone darkened ominously. “At the least, a long time.”

“And the cure?” Alex blurted. “You said you’d give me the solution.”

“Maybe.”

“ _Please,”_ Alex begged. He took a step forward, Yassen’s hand on his forearm keeping him from fully approaching the doctor. “ _Please.”_ His voice broke on the last word. He could feel himself ready to collapse.

Next to him, Yassen frowned. “The cure has worked?”

“Yes,” the doctor snapped, ignoring Alex. “As I told you the last hundred times you asked, the cure works. And he was healthy. His heart rate was stable when I checked him last time. He will recover quickly.”

“So you say.”

“Yes, _so I say_. Watch. I’ll give him the solution, and you can watch him nap without problems.”

Yassen’s hand on Alex’s forearm tightened. “There won’t be side effects?”

The doctor scowled in return. “I have manufactured the problem and the solution. Slight variance may occur in each person, but his most severe symptoms will certainly disappear after my cure. Does it matter? You’re going to kill him anyway. I have what I need from him.”

Alex couldn’t pretend to be surprised.

_Death would almost be worth if they would just let him sleep before they shot him._

_Maybe Yassen would give him that much if Alex pleaded enough. If he could leverage John Rider._

Finally, Yassen released Alex’s arm, and Alex stumbled closer to the man who held the cure.

It took only minutes for Dr. Varadkar to prepare a dose of the cure.

Hours could have passed in Alex’s tortured consciousness.

The injection didn’t hurt.

“Take a nap,” Dr. Varadkar said, his words swimming in Alex’s head. “I’ll wake you if needed.”

“Go ahead,” Yassen echoed, softly.

It wasn’t safe here.

_Alex, leave,_ Ian snapped.

He sat down against the wall and closed his eyes.

Sleep came in milliseconds.

\-------------

He was slapped awake.

“Wake up,” Dr. Varadkar spoke, harshly, as Alex opened his eyes.

The lab loomed large and far too bright from his view on the floor.

A headache was taking over Alex’s head, although not a strong one.

He was tired, still. So tired. But he’d slept some.

_He’d slept._

Longer than half an hour, he wagered.

“How long was I asleep?” Alex asked, quietly, catching up with the situation as he made himself stand.

“Ten hours.” The doctor smiled proudly. “You struggled to breathe for a while at first, and then my solution took effect. As I said, I invented the problem and the solution. And from what I’ve now read of my work from the files you brought, I did so brilliantly.”

Alex shivered. Madmen always thought they were brilliant. Then he looked to find the man who was going to kill him, if he couldn’t find a way to protect himself soon.

Yassen was standing by the door, examining him. A faint frown line disappeared as Alex took him in. “How do you feel?”

Like it was none of Yassen’s business how he felt.

He was still too indebted to sleep to properly glare, so he glanced away at the rest of the lab, wondering if there might be a sharp object somewhere around the perimeter of the room.

“He feels better, I assume.”

“Your answer, Alex?” Yassen asked. The sharp edge in his voice implied this would go far better if Alex answered, and honestly.

“I’m better,” Alex muttered, eyeing a drawer in a cabinet close by. Maybe there would be scissors inside?

“It seems your research is complete, doctor,” Yassen said. “You have a way to force sleeplessness and cure someone of the condition, and quickly, it appears.”

“There’s more tinkering to do, but yes.” Dr. Varadkar said, smiling wickedly. “When my sponsors discover how successful I have been, I have no doubt they’ll be pleased. I’ll make them aware of the results soon, I think. After a few more tests.”

“Will more tests be necessary? You have run quite a few experiments, and MI6 corroborated your data, even if they didn’t know it. You have even proven the results in front of me.”

Some part of Yassen’s tone was off; deliberately light.

Alex took a couple steps back, against the wall. Despite his exhaustion, he had a sudden suspicion.

“Yes,” the doctor said, suspicious now, even if he didn’t realize why. “More tests are necessary. What is this? You’ve been rushing me for results since you got here. Science doesn’t move at the pace your employer demands – you must know that!”

Yassen shrugged. “Perhaps. Or perhaps you could tell me what specifically you still need to test for.”

“Why, I need to test for,“ Dr. Varadkar stammered. “I need to test for, for –”

Yassen shot him.

The doctor crumpled to the floor.

Alex took an unsteady breath.

“Irritating,” Yassen remarked. “He took too long to be certain of results he had already proven. Even with an MI6 agent possibly about to turn him in for human experimentation, he wasted my time.”

The moment stretched on, with Alex frozen, staring at the doctor. Any other time he would have reacted. Now, his instincts were slowed, and his head muddled.

Finally, he looked at Yassen.

The man looked back at him, calm. His gun had disappeared back into his holster.

“Are you going to kill me?” Alex asked. He wished he had his wits about him to think of a reason to explain why Yassen’s shouldn’t.

It turned out, having his wits wasn’t necessary, as Yassen shook his head. “I have no grudge against you. I’ll be gone before you report to MI6, if you ever do.”

Why wouldn’t Alex tell MI6?

It hit him instantly that perhaps reporting that he’d stolen files from the agency would not go down well.

“I-“Alex started, before breaking off. He wasn’t sure he wanted to convey how much torture the past week had put him in – or if he wanted to ask if Yassen had always meant to let him live.

“None of this was personal.” Yassen moved to collect papers from the top of a counter. “The choices were to kill you, or use you. I won’t apologize for my choice.”

He hadn’t been able to sleep. Not for a week.

_At one point he’d even considered darker ways to keep awake. Every moment he had been made to measure the costs of sleep against the pain of gasping for air, or not waking in time._

It didn’t matter. Yassen wasn’t likely to care.

“Stand still.” Yassen shuffled the papers into a neat stack in his hands. “Once I have what I need to satisfy the demands of my employer, I will leave. After that, you may go.”

Alex inhaled and exhaled steadily.

It was a luxury to breath freely after sleeping so long.

It took a short while for Yassen to gather what he needed. At least, once he had filled a suitcase and a small cooler with samples and paperwork, he looked at Alex. “Don’t come after me.”

No. That wouldn’t be a good idea. As things were, Yassen would win. Easily.

“What was this for?” Alex asked, expecting a non-answer, if he was responded to at all.

“The doctor’s work will be helpful for interrogations,” Yassen said.

It made a dark sense. In the past week, Alex would have given up anything to be able to sleep again.

He had given up information.

Even the threat had been enough for him.

Alex’s jaw twitched.

“Go home, Alex. You have choices besides MI6.”

Maybe.

Probably not, though, if he knew himself.

“Goodbye, Alex.” Yassen turned to leave.

“I’ll find you!” Alex said, not able to stop himself. “I’ll stop this. I’ll destroy the problem, and get the cure for the people who need it.”

Yassen shrugged, and walked through the door to the lab, carrying a suitcase in one hand and a cooler in another.

Alex slumped against the wall, sliding down it.

He was so tired.

This wasn’t over.


End file.
